Boundary Peak (NV) hike

[Jay H]

Well, seeing that there isn't a TR for this peak and I've finished uploading my pictures, I thought I'd start this thread.

After getting sick (alititude or otherwise) on Whitney and not being a state highpointer myself really, I figured I'd take it easy on this hike, not entirely sure I'd summit or just hike the few miles out to the base of the climb. It looked to be another hot day in the high desert and I was already looking and hopeing to be better in order to climb Shasta and Hood which were more on my radar than Boundary Peak. However, the ride getting there was an adventure itself.

In Bishop, CA, Terri, Dawn, and I stopped by the White Mtns Ranger Station (go figure, 1000 miles away, still in the "whites" ) to inquire about conditions of the ~15+ mile dirt road known as Trail Canyon Rd which gets you to the trailhead for the bushwack to Boundary Peak. While there, in addition to getting a sheet on how to get there and good beta on the climb itself, we inquire about the road. The friendly rangers there ask us if we have a 4WD vehicle to which I think Terri replied "No, we have a rental!" This rental in question being a basic Chevy Malibu LT....

In any case, due to my illness (I was coughing up a fit back in the hotel we stayed in Lone Pine), we decided to stay in Lone Pine one more night and motel it rather than camp closer to the trailhead which means we got up super early, like 4am for the 2 hour drive from Bishop, CA to the trailhead. Since the approach to BP, at least the standard approach and not the Queen Mine side, came from the east, it means we'd be driving around the mountain. We find trail Canyon road fairly easy as there is a sign at the junction of SR273(???, my memory fades now). Driving the road, it's a mixture of "What the hell was that thunk sound" and "look, the check engine light isn't on and the car is still running". Anyway, after one loud thunk from running over some tall rock, we get to the trailhead and campsites (car camping). There are about 3 others on the trail who camped there the night before. 2 guys from Canada that I would meet on their departure and 2 other guys I believe who didn't sign in for some reason at the trail register.

Anyway, after packing up and leaving, I felt OK on the flat sections but once elevation was gained a bit, I felt I was struggling a bit, After dropping behind Terri and Dawn, I felt it was pointless to try to kill myself and hike up so I decided to take it easy and photograph all the very pretty desert flowers that sprinkled the valley. There was a stream that ran right down the middle of the valley we were following to get to the climb so there was some very pretty flora around with pines and stuff around the taller and drier sides of the valley. I would eventually get close to the bowl of Boundary Peak and would seak vantage points in the shade so I could see if I could watch Dawn and Terri go up. However, they eventually went behind a ridge and was lost from sight and I was without binoculars for this hike.

I hung around til about 2pm then I started to bushwack back to the car and waited a few more hours for their return (around 5pmish). So the pictures I got on this is mostly the flora that I ran into in the valley, no summit pictures on this trip.

Fortunately, I felt better and better each day after, which we spent in Reno before going further north to climb Shasta...

http://community.webshots.com/album/552527831ZLOerN

Jay

 

[audrey]

Thanks a lot Jay, you've shown me another place I have to go. The wildflowers are looking good in spite of the heat: you must have been at some altitude. Some of those flowers bloom much earlier in the vicinity of Las Vegas.

 

[TMax]

Wow Jay, you really were sick...we were 3000 miles away and still in the Whites (not 1000) and we stayed in Bishop not Lone Pine for two nights before doing Boundary

After Hikethe115 and I left Jay in our dust (see, all it takes is a major illness to slow him down a little!) we started to climb out of the valley where sage brush and purple lupine dominated the terrain. The perspective was off because of the "grand scale" of things. So things seemed closer, less steep, etc... Walking up through the valley, while looking flat or nearly so, was a pretty consistent up and by the time we got to the base of the bowl, we'd gained about 1000'. I continued to scan the mountainside looking for the two hikers who had signed in at the trailhead (thinking it was two guys we had met at a gear shop in Bishop the day before) and never saw them until we were in the bowl. And then they just appeared as tiny dots on the hillside. As we started the serious ascent, the scree dominated. It was just this very fine sand/pebbles with the occassional "rock" thrown in. The sun was blazing down on us. The slope started out at about a 20 degree angle but finished at around 40-45. Towards the top we would often not make any forward progress because of the slippage and sometimes even lose ground. From the base of the bowl to the saddle is about 2000' of ascent, add this to the 1000' from the trailhead to the bowl and imagine that in about 2.5 miles which we did in about 3 hours . Not a bad morning's start. We took a break behind some big rocks to get a little shade and dropped a couple water bottles here for the return trip. We could hear (and sort of see) the other hikers on the summit and the journey there looked deceptively easy following the ridgeline that goes up-over-down-up-over etc... a bunch of bulges. On one of these you couldn't traverse directly over it so we dropped below it. This led to some hairy climbing as we were now side-hillling with very loose rocks. In trying to lean on them for stability or use them for leverage I managed to pull three good sized ones down on myself. Needless to say, we moved more slowly through this section. Eventually we got back on the ridge which made for better footing but it was still a steep climb. From the saddle to the summit is another 1200' in just over a half mile. There were some pretty cool rock scrambles and then we were on the summit. What a fantastic view from the top. I looked over to Montgomery Peak (which is over the state border and is another California 14er) and decided it was pretty close and I would hike over. Then I noticed two people on their way down from Montgomery and they were barely specks! I pulled out my topo map to learn that it was about a mile away but with over 1000' of elevation gain up and then another 400' to climb back up Boundary. I started to question my decision to "run over." While we replenished calories and fluids I waited for the two hikers to return to Boundary. They said it took them 2 and a half hours to get over to Montgomery and back. That did it, given that it was already late in the day, I chose to stay put, enjoy the views then head back. The descent back down the ridge was much better as we avoided the side-hilling by dropping just below the big rock and then re-gaining the ridge right away. Back at the saddle we picked up water bottles (mine was now in the sun and warm...Dawn's was in the shade and very cool! Thankfully she shared!) and then started down the scree. What a blast! It was like coming down in powder snow. We simply plunge-stepped and fell into a rhythym that allowed us to get down in far less than half the time it took to get up! The hike left a lot to be desired, but the summit was fantastic! I think this would be a really fun hike in winter. Hmmmm.....

Here's my pics http://community.webshots.com/album/552563168YAkjCO

 

[Jay H]

Audrey, I believe the trailhead is somewhere in the vincinity of 9000ft, since the climb to the 13k Boundary Peak is about a 4000' ascent over a ~3mile hike to the summit. There were some really interesting geology and flora in and around the valley, I wandered off the beaten path and checked out many interesting rock and pine formations along the valley while I was milling about. Not much wildlife though, I didn't see the deer that Terri and Dawn did..

Jay

 

[giggy]

Nice report Terri and Jay - now I can put some sights to the names you guys were talking about..

 

[Bob]

sickness and rental cars

When i was there I got violently ill at 10K, go figure....never been so sick from altitude in my life, my 2 companions were fine. The rental car got extremely scratched on the drive in, thank goodness for rubbing compound.
The highlight of that trip was seeing the wild horses there. Another was hearing about a tent rolling across the campground like tumbleweed, and realizing it was mine. Thank goodness the barbed wire fence stopped it.

 

[Jay H]

We saw some wild horses getting to Trail Canyon Rd. A very interesting sight, indeed. It's a pretty area to drive around, although I would miss the forrested lands of the lower less arid climates after a while. We had a coyote cross in front of our car not far north of Bishop while getting to the border too.

Jay